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Commentator predicts changes at the Vatican

ELEANOR HALL: Well religious commentator Clifford Longley is the lead writer for the Vatican journal the Tablet. When he spoke to me earlier he predicted that Pope Francis will shake things up at the Vatican.

(Speaking to Clifford Longley)

So Clifford Longley, Argentina's Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Pope from outside Europe, the first Jesuit, were you surprised by this choice?

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: I was very surprised by it but once you know it, you think back to the logic behind it and it becomes almost obvious but really that still is no excuse. I and no other expert that I am aware of had predicted this outcome so yes, surprised.

ELEANOR HALL: When we last spoke you said you expected the cardinals to choose a much younger Pope, why do you think they didn't?

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: I don't know. To be honest with you the fact is that he was very strongly fancied as Pope the last time they were electing back in 2005 and so they've really gone back to their other choice. I don't quite know what that says about their other choice. I mean we'll have to think about that but they've chosen somebody who's not going to be there forever.

The point about choosing somebody shall we say in their 50s or 60s is that you could get stuck with somebody for a long time. I think we're going to find that this man's in a hurry because he knows he hasn't got forever.

In a way that's possibly what they want. They want someone to get a move on and stir things up quickly.

ELEANOR HALL: There is talk of him being a compromise candidate. What do you make of that, compromise in what sense?

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: Well, compromise in the sense that he is not a radical. I mean he is in some of his personal moral attitude is quite conservative. That's not to say he is conservative politically but on issues of for example sexual morality he is going to be fairly conservative so I don't expect any apple carts to be upset.

They don't want someone to upset some areas of teaching but they do want the Church to be shaken up and they do want it to have a new image, an image of poverty, an image of not being European, not being bound by bureaucracy, of being freer, being much more humane, and I think we already saw the human face coming through even in that first meeting between himself and the enormous crowd in St Peters. There was a humanity about it which I must say I found very attractive.

ELEANOR HALL: Yes, his first address there shows he is clearly a charismatic figure and as cardinal he wasn't averse to taking on the government in his home country. Is he likely though to be an activist Pope on social issues?

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: Yes, I think so. The Catholic Church does already position itself as a major critic of free market capitalism and so he's going to continue that but he's seen the effects of it personally in the way that perhaps his predecessors didn't. He's lived among the poor, he knows what life is like when you haven't got two pennies to rub together so he is suddenly a man of the people projected onto the world stage in this way, which is quite astounding.

I mean I think an awful lot of world leaders are going to have to think quite carefully about how they approach him because he's got a potency because of his poverty, his chosen poverty.

ELEANOR HALL: And what's the significance of his choice of name?

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: Very significant indeed. I mean if you decode this in the Catholic world, Francis was a great saint of poverty, a man who turned his back on all the material rewards and advantages and chose to be absolutely penniless and also a man who is immensely green and environmentally aware. I mean St Francis is famous for his relationship with nature and so I think we are going to see a much higher profile given under this papacy to issues in that area.

What I like about him most I think is he is completely unpretentious.

ELEANOR HALL: Now you also stressed when the last Pope resigned that his successor must be someone who can control the Vatican bureaucracy. Is that a strength for this Pope?

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: I think so. I think he is not going to mess around. I mean here's a man who sold his palace and insisted on living in a ordinary humble house. He's a man who dismissed his chauffeur and travels by bus. He's a man who didn't want a cook, who cooked his own food. I mean this is going to be a radical shock to the way the Vatican operates.

I don't really know how many surprises we can bear and they themselves I think are probably bracing themselves for some quite interesting eventualities as they turn out.

He doesn't like pomp and circumstance and the way the Vatican normally operates is immensely smothered in pomp and circumstance and he's going to dispense with that quite quickly.

ELEANOR HALL: Well, he may face some surprises too. The last time we spoke you said the cardinals in prospect to be the new Pope should have been able to see that secret dossier before taking on the role. Do you think there is any likelihood that that happened; this Pope has a clear sense of the challenge there?

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: Well, there are ways in which the cardinals can have found out what sort of report that was. They haven't got the document itself but they are in touch with people who know what's in it and I think therefore they probably all got a pretty clear idea and he is the kind of man who wouldn't take this job on unless he got some measure in his own mind of what was required and I think he's prepared to be pretty rough, pretty tough, pretty ruthless even, in trying to sort out the mess that seems to have been developing in the Vatican.

ELEANOR HALL: Now you've also spoken of the difficulty for the new Pope of having Pope Benedict still right there in the Vatican. How close is the relationship between the old and the new Pope?

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: Not close at all. They are aware of each other, I've no doubt at all they respect each other. It was very nice that we saw the new Pope asking the crowd in St Peters to pray for the Pope Emeritus Benedict but I think he's his own man. He is not going to be an extension of the Benedict papacy. He is going to go off in new directions altogether.

ELEANOR HALL: Clifford Longley, thanks very much for joining us.

CLIFFORD LONGLEY: Thank you.

ELEANOR HALL: That's religious commentator Clifford Longley, the lead writer for the Vatican journal, the Tablet.